Congratulations! You made it! You survived and excelled in your student teaching. You are now a science teacher! If you would, take a few minutes to share your wisdom about how to negotiate this difficult year with the students who are following in your footsteps by answering the following questions.
· Describe your first student teaching context (school setting). What school are you at, what are some of its characteristics, and what classes are you teaching, and how are classes scheduled at your school? (At least one paragraph.) · Explain one of your "stealth" objectives that you want to accomplish with your students and why. (At least one paragraph) · Use the template "EDC 484 RJ01 - School Setting" to create your journal page.
a. What are some things students should do in their fall practicum to make their student teaching go more smoothly?
Do whatever you need to do so you do not have to work another job during your student teaching. I say 'another job', because student teaching is a job on its own, without the benefit of a paycheck. This doesn't mean there are not other benefits, but I found that trying to work while student teaching made the entire process more difficult than it needed to be. My financial situation put me in a position where I had to work all day on Saturdays in order to make enough money for food and fuel. This left one day out of the week for me to plan my lessons, search for resources, do any necessary grading, create handouts, find activities/videos/demos, and do any work for seminar. This was simply not enough time. Do what you can to work as little as possible outside of student teaching, it will demand your every moment.
b. What 430 topics/assignments should students make sure are addressed in detail to prepare them for student teaching?
Be sure and have a good grasp of how to effectively pull off inquiry. The benefit of this is two fold. First of all it is a great approach to learning science. It put students in the shoes of scientists and gets them to ask questions they normally would not have considered. Also, it takes some of the work off of your shoulders and puts it on the students. Why this may seam like the lazy way out, but it is important for teachers to be sure the students are doing more thinking than you are. Inquiry is a great way to put the bulk of the thinking on the student while freeing up your brain for things like formative assessmen, which is another topic from 430 i recommend having a solid grip on.
c. Help the next group of science education student teachers by completing the thought: "If I knew in September what I know now, I could have done a better job during student teaching if I had ...."
Put more of the responciblity of learning on the student.
As I mentioned above we want the students brain to be more active than your own. A good approach to this is to think of what you need to do for a lesson and see if you can manipulate the situation in such a way that the student does the work for you, and learns something in the process. For example if you are looking for a good video to demonstrait osmosis, rather than spend an hour or so on youtube, have the students do a search for you, reporting back with a good video with an explanation as to why they think it is a good video.
d. Are there other words of wisdom/encouragement that you want to share?
Stay ontop of grading. If you get an assignemnt on Monday its graded on Monday and returned Tuesday. Students need feedback as fast as possible ionorder for it to be of any use to them. If they get it 2 or 3 days later they have already forgotten what the assignment was. Also your grading pile can snowball into a morally devistating stack of paper that will haunt your dreams. You have to get it done at some point so do it RIGHT AWAY. If at any point you think you can get away with not doing any grading for a day than you need to remember that not only is it in your best intrest to grade the papers right away, it is also best for the student to get that feedback as soon as possible. It is our dubty as teacheers to serve each student as best we can and that requires fast feedback.
Also,
Suck it up. Student teaching is a difficult period. You are oging to have to work withsomeone who may have different views about teaching than you. Deal with it. Think of it as an opportunity to take a new perspective on teaching. While you may have this ideal view on how you want to teach. You have nothing to lose by taking in thier perspective on things.
Congratulations! You made it! You survived and excelled in your student teaching. You are now a science teacher! If you would, take a few minutes to share your wisdom about how to negotiate this difficult year with the students who are following in your footsteps by answering the following questions.
· Describe your first student teaching context (school setting). What school are you at, what are some of its characteristics, and what classes are you teaching, and how are classes scheduled at your school? (At least one paragraph.)
· Explain one of your "stealth" objectives that you want to accomplish with your students and why. (At least one paragraph)
· Use the template "EDC 484 RJ01 - School Setting" to create your journal page.
a. What are some things students should do in their fall practicum to make their student teaching go more smoothly?
Do whatever you need to do so you do not have to work another job during your student teaching. I say 'another job', because student teaching is a job on its own, without the benefit of a paycheck. This doesn't mean there are not other benefits, but I found that trying to work while student teaching made the entire process more difficult than it needed to be. My financial situation put me in a position where I had to work all day on Saturdays in order to make enough money for food and fuel. This left one day out of the week for me to plan my lessons, search for resources, do any necessary grading, create handouts, find activities/videos/demos, and do any work for seminar. This was simply not enough time. Do what you can to work as little as possible outside of student teaching, it will demand your every moment.
b. What 430 topics/assignments should students make sure are addressed in detail to prepare them for student teaching?
Be sure and have a good grasp of how to effectively pull off inquiry. The benefit of this is two fold. First of all it is a great approach to learning science. It put students in the shoes of scientists and gets them to ask questions they normally would not have considered. Also, it takes some of the work off of your shoulders and puts it on the students. Why this may seam like the lazy way out, but it is important for teachers to be sure the students are doing more thinking than you are. Inquiry is a great way to put the bulk of the thinking on the student while freeing up your brain for things like formative assessmen, which is another topic from 430 i recommend having a solid grip on.
c. Help the next group of science education student teachers by completing the thought: "If I knew in September what I know now, I could have done a better job during student teaching if I had ...."
Put more of the responciblity of learning on the student.
As I mentioned above we want the students brain to be more active than your own. A good approach to this is to think of what you need to do for a lesson and see if you can manipulate the situation in such a way that the student does the work for you, and learns something in the process. For example if you are looking for a good video to demonstrait osmosis, rather than spend an hour or so on youtube, have the students do a search for you, reporting back with a good video with an explanation as to why they think it is a good video.
d. Are there other words of wisdom/encouragement that you want to share?
Stay ontop of grading. If you get an assignemnt on Monday its graded on Monday and returned Tuesday. Students need feedback as fast as possible ionorder for it to be of any use to them. If they get it 2 or 3 days later they have already forgotten what the assignment was. Also your grading pile can snowball into a morally devistating stack of paper that will haunt your dreams. You have to get it done at some point so do it RIGHT AWAY. If at any point you think you can get away with not doing any grading for a day than you need to remember that not only is it in your best intrest to grade the papers right away, it is also best for the student to get that feedback as soon as possible. It is our dubty as teacheers to serve each student as best we can and that requires fast feedback.
Also,
Suck it up. Student teaching is a difficult period. You are oging to have to work withsomeone who may have different views about teaching than you. Deal with it. Think of it as an opportunity to take a new perspective on teaching. While you may have this ideal view on how you want to teach. You have nothing to lose by taking in thier perspective on things.